Talk: Marlene Dietrich

Part of our Marlene Dietrich season

Join Depot's Chair of Trustees, Robert Senior, for a talk on The Life and Films of Marlene Dietrich

The Berlin born actress Marlene Dietrich achieved international fame playing Lola in Joseph Von Sternberg’s early talkie The Blue Angel, made in 1930. Then 29 years old, she went on to make seven films with Sternberg, their close collaboration producing some of the greatest and most artistically accomplished movies of all time.

Dietrich, who was bisexual, grew up during the Weimer Republic era of the 1920s, and was immersed in the steamy world of smoky nightclubs, cross-dressing, and promiscuity of the period immortalized in the books of Christopher Isherwood and the musical Cabaret. In the pre-code era in Hollywood up to the mid-1930s she used her charisma, beauty and sexuality to dominate the screen, invariably controlling the male characters and the narrative.

Out of a canon of great films Depot will be screening The Blue Angel along with perhaps her greatest role as Shanghai Lily in Shanghai Express (1932) and as Catherine the Great in The Scarlet Express (1934). These masterful productions featured art and costume designs and stylish direction which has rarely been equalled.

Dietrich’s persona as a feisty entertainer was again used to great effect in the 1939 comedy western Destry Rides Again (George Marshall), playing against a young James Stewart. Her star waned during the war years but she continued to work with great directors such as Billy Wilder (notably Witness for the Prosecution), Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock, starring in his quirky thriller Stage Fright in 1950. In 1958 she had a cameo appearance in Orson Welles’ powerful noir Touch of Evil before turning to cabaret shows in Vegas and around the world. She died in 1992.